Office of the Press Secretary
(Seattle, Washington)
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release November 6, 1994
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
ON LARRY KING LIVE
Columbia DuBrin Realty Advisors Building
Seattle, Washington

3:30 P.M. PST

MR. KING: Welcome to a special Sunday night
addition of Larry King Live. Our special guest is the President
of the United States. A beautiful day here in Seattle. It
rained earlier this morning, but there's no city like this. You
seemed revved up here today.

THE PRESIDENT: It's a wonderful city. They've been
very good to me. But it's just an exciting place. It's a real
future-oriented place with a lot of different kind folks. They
get together. They work together. It's a real upbeat, positive
city.

MR. KING: Do you like campaigning again?

THE PRESIDENT: I do --

MR. KING: It seemed like you were just campaigning.

THE PRESIDENT: I know.

MR. KING: Do you like this?

THE PRESIDENT: I do like it. In large measure I
like it because it's one of the few times I get to really go out
and put out our record, my message. And I also just like to see
the American people. You know, I like to see them excited and
energized again.

MR. KING: I remember when you were running, we were
in Ocala, and you said to me, God, I love this.

THE PRESIDENT: It was wonderful. Remember that we
were in that rodeo arena. Remember that?

MR. KING: Where Elvis Presley once sung.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, that's right.

MR. KING: You were revved up, and you seem the same
way now. It would seem that after this time you've been
President for two years that it's old hat by now.

THE PRESIDENT: But these are the people I work for.
And perhaps the most frustrating part of being president is how
hard it is to stay in touch with them, to stay connected to them,
for them to really know what you do on a daily basis. And so to
be able to come back out here with someone like Ron Simms, whom I
admire so much, that represents what's best in this country,
that's cutting against all this cynicism and negativism that is
blanketing the airwaves. It's really just a great thing to do.

MR. KING: What do you make of that? We'll start
there, and there's lots of bases we're going to cover, of these
-- lots of radio talks shows, other areas of negativism, that's
more than just criticism. It's anger. What do you make of it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's almost like an
institutionalized approach to life, that everything is given the
most negative possible spin; information is presented in attack
mode. The American people hate it, but they react to it.

MR. KING: But portions of them listen to it.

THE PRESIDENT: Portions of them listen to it, of
course. And even if they listen for entertainment, the surveys
show in these elections that they react to it, which is, of
course, why the politicians do it.

MR. KING: So what does it mean to you when you see
it, hear it, about you, about people you like -- about anyone?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it -- what I think is it's not
very good for America. It's not good for our people. It make it
harder for people to take a deep breath and face their problems
and seize their opportunities and move forward.

I mean, this is a very, very great country. And as
I have a chance, for example, to go to the Middle East to
participate in that peace signing, other leaders are bewildered
at the negative attitudes in America. They say, gosh, you're
economy is coming back, your deficit's going down, things are
happening in your country. You're leading the way to peace
around the world. Why would the American people be in a negative
frame of mind?

And I always say, well, first of all, a lot of
Americans have personal insecurity in their lives. I mean, let's
face it, there's some reality out there - there are a lot of
people who are afraid they're going to lose their jobs. They
haven't gotten a raise in a long time. They may lose their
health care or their retirement. They're living in a
neighborhood where they feel personally insecure. They see
things like these children killing children. It violates their
sense of --

MR. KING: So they have a right to that feeling?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, no, there's some insecurity
there. In other words, the picture is not all positive. But I
think the direction is positive, and the future is more positive
than negative. But I think the other thing is, the overwhelming
way that most Americans get their information is -- tends to be
both negative and combative and assaultive, almost. And what I
tried to do in the presidential campaign in '92 with all those
town meetings, starting way back in '91, where I listened to
people and they talked to me, insisting on three debates, and
having one debate with the public there asking questions of the
candidates for president, with the bus tours we did was all
designed to get people involved, let them vent their frustrations
and then focus on what we were going to do.

And that's very important. And that's the thing
that has been missing too much in this election. And, of course,
the Republicans like that because if people are mad, then they
think the Democrats don't vote and the extremists on the right in
their party do vote, they get a big advantage and it helps them
get into power. But it doesn't do anything to help America solve
their problems.

MR. KING: How do you deal with it personally, I
mean, the carping, the anger, the up and down in the polls --
personally?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, on the up and down in the
polls, I basically try to ignore it.

MR. KING: Ignore it.

THE PRESIDENT: Not because -- I care what people
think about the issues, but I knew when I started this job that
while everybody said they wanted us to change, if it were easy to
do it, someone else would have done it. So to get the deficit
down, we had to make some tough decisions.

If you're going to make college loans more
affordable to Americans within the budgetary constraints we had,
we had to make some tough decisions, take on some interest
groups. If you want to pass the Brady Bill and the crime bill,
you've got to make some tough decisions. The NRA got real mad at
us and now they're trying to take it out on every candidate in
the country that stood up for safer streets.

So anybody who ever fights for change is going have
to be willing to risk going down in the polls some. What bothers
me more is the general atmosphere where people tend to believe
the worst about people in public life, rather than the best; and
tend to have a negative view, generally. Because the truth is
that this country is in better shape than it was 21 months ago.
Unemployment is down, jobs are up; the deficit is down; the
government is smaller, but it's doing more for ordinary working
people. The streets are going to be safer because of the crime
bill. And we're a lot closer toward having a safer, more
democratic, more free world. Russian missiles aren't pointing at
us; the North Korean nuclear agreement means they won't present a
threat to us in terms of nuclear weapons, if we go through with
that. We have the progress in Haiti and in the Persian Gulf and
the Middle East and Northern Ireland. We are moving in the right
direction at home and abroad. We have a lot of problems, but
we're moving in the right direction.

And for people to be kept in a constant turmoil all
the time, where they don't listen to one another, they don't talk
to one another, they just are bombarded by these negative ads on
television I think is not good for our democracy. And it is,
frankly, not realistic. If you could see the way other people
look at us, they know this is a very great country. And we
should feel that way, too.

MR. KING: When there's extreme negativism, do you
condemn it on both sides?

THE PRESIDENT: Sure.

MR. KING: When Democrats do it and Republicans do
it?

THE PRESIDENT: Absolutely. Particularly if it is
unrelated to the work of the job. But let's be realistic, now.
This whole thing started from the get-go with the determination
of the congressional leadership in the Republican Party not to
work with us on the economic program.

MR. KING: Deliberate?

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, absolutely. They were very
forthright about it: You're not going to get any votes out of us
no matter how you change this program. That's how it started.

THE PRESIDENT: -- (in progress) -- were abducted.
And there was this little town in South Carolina where there
apparently had been maybe some division or something in the past,
but they were all coming together. You saw those gripping
pictures of the schoolchildren praying. You saw blacks and
whites going out together to look for the kids. People really
were trying to do their best to do a good and noble thing.

And then they found out that the mother had done it.
And unlike previous cases -- we've had some other cases, horrible
cases, where parents kill their children. But this was -- it
stood in such stark contrast to those people praying, working,
desperately trying to find those children. I think they had a
sense of betrayal, of outrage, of bewilderment, of pain. And I
think the experience the people in the community felt riveted all
across our country; indeed, across the world. I think every
parent was just sickened by it.

MR. KING: The fact that -- and remember the case in
Boston with the call to 911 -- that she drew the picture of a
black man tells us what about racism in America?

THE PRESIDENT: I think it tells us that we have at
least some assumptions about race that still color our thinking,
our talking, sometimes our voting. The people in that community,
without regard to race, were out there looking for those boys.
And most African Americans in this country get up every day and
go to work, work their hearts out, pay their taxes, raise their
kids, obey the law. And while the crime rate is higher among
African Americans, they're also more likely to be victims of
crime. And it's all really -- it's a complicated thing, but it's
plainly related to the combined impact of the breakdown of family
and community and the loss of economic opportunity working
together.

I saw a poll in The Wall Street Journal the other
day, a fascinating poll, which said that both African Americans
and white Americans agreed that this breakdown of social order in
the family, the community, the rise of crime, violence, drugs and
gangs and guns was the biggest problem in our country. They
agreed with that. They all supported welfare reform -- I mean,
not all; 85 percent of both races. But there was a huge
difference in attitude between blacks and the whites about what
caused it, where the whites were more likely to say it's just all
personal misconduct, and the blacks were more likely to say it
was the breakdown of economic order and opportunity that holds
families together and gives people --

MR. KING: The classic American clash.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. And the truth is, in my
judgment, they're both right and they're both wrong. That is,
you need a combined approach to it. We have to rebuild these
communities. It's hard to have an orderly society without work.
It's hard to have a coherent family without work. It's hard for
parents to have all the self-respect they want if they know
they'll never have a chance to go to work.

But on the other hand, we simply cannot tolerate the
behavior that has become all too commonplace. I mean, what is it
that turns the heart of a 10-year-old to stone in Chicago and
makes it possible for them to let go of a five-year-old boy?
These are big, deep questions. And again I say, the thing that
is so wrong about so much of the political dialogue in this
election, or political ads, is there's no dialogue. There's no
honest talk. People aren't reaching out across racial lines and
trying to figure out how to affirm what is best in this country,
how to support the lives and the futures of these kids.

MR. KING: Are you saying they're playing to the
worst in us -- the racist in us?

THE PRESIDENT: I think they're playing to the --
they're playing to the lowest common denominator -- to the fear,
to the division, to the anxiety. I believe that it's better to
play to the best in us -- to address fear, to address anxiety, to
admit it, to say it's legitimate; say, okay, what are you going
to do about it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, certainly the most expensive
and probably the most negative certainly in a very long time.
And it's very troubling. I tried to get this campaign finance
bill passed. And it was delayed to death at the end of the
session by our opponents, like a lot of other bills were. But we
don't need that. We need to reform the campaign finance system.

In every one of these races of major import, there
ought to be two or three debates; there ought to be town hall
meetings; there ought to be things that involve people, that let
them express their anger and frustration; and then say, okay,
now, what are you going to do about it? Because what we run the
risk of doing in this election -- which is why I've been out here
working like crazy since I got home from the Middle East -- is we
run the risk of seeing people vote for candidates whose platforms
and positions they absolutely disagree with just because they
say, I'm out, put me in; I'm mad, too.

MR. KING: Throw the rascals out.

THE PRESIDENT: Government's bad; put me in. Yes.

MR. KING: I haven't seen you quoted on it, and
every American has talked about it and they all want to know what
their President thinks. You were an attorney general in your
state, a prosecutor, so it's a twofold question: Can there be a
fair trial in the O.J. Simpson case? And two, should television
cameras be allowed?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the answer to the first
question is, I think there can be a fair trial, but it is much
more difficult to empanel a jury that has no opinion.

MR. KING: There's never been anything like this.

THE PRESIDENT: No, there has never been anything
like it. Secondly, I'm not so troubled about the trial itself
being televised. What bothers me is that all the previous
proceedings have been televised, all the preliminary things, all
the back-and-forth arguments. And I know there are arguments pro
and con, but on balance, I think it would have been better if
they hadn't been, because I think it would have been easier to
empanel a jury that had no fixed views, no -- at least
predisposition to believe it. Now, what these folks have to say
and what they had to convince the judge of was that whatever they
had heard in the past, they could put aside and be fair.

But I just think all of us, we can't help being
affected by the things we know. And the wrenching pretrial
publicity I think is more damaging than whatever publicity might
have come in the trial itself.

MR. KING: Are you impressed with Judge Ito?

THE PRESIDENT: Very much.

MR. KING: And the prosecution and defense?

THE PRESIDENT: They all strike me as competent and
committed. And the judge strikes me as someone who has been firm
and fair. He's trying very hard, and he has an enormously
difficult task.

MR. KING: Is this the kind of case, when you were
prosecuting, you would have liked to prosecute or not like to
prosecute?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, of course, any -- I think most
prosecutors would -- at a kind of a personal, professional level
welcome the chance to be in a big case like this. But it's a
very sad case. It's the sort of thing that brings great pain to
a country.

MR. KING: No winners.

THE PRESIDENT: No. I mean, there are -- people are
dead. The feelings that we all had about O.J. Simpson and
everything -- it's a very sad case. So it's not something I can
say I would relish doing because the whole thing is enormously
tragic.

MR. KING: We'll be back with the President of the
United States. We'll get into issues and some thoughts on the
elections Tuesday right after this.

MR. KING: Beautiful downtown Seattle on a beautiful
Sunday afternoon in the American Pacific Northwest with President
Bill Clinton, two days away from the election. Friday night on
this program, Bob Dole said that on Tuesday night, when the
Republicans take the Senate -- if they take the Senate -- and the
House, the first person he calls will be you. He will ask to
meet with you Wednesday morning. Win or lose, whatever happens,
they're ready to cooperate. Comment.

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think they're going to win
the House and the Senate. But whatever happens, I hope he'll
call me Tuesday night and I hope he'll be willing to cooperate.

MR. KING: Hope, but don't think?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't know yet. All I can
tell you is that we had bipartisan support for that crime bill,
and it turned into to naked politics. And the Republicans that
did stick with us were lacerated by their leadership.

I hope they don't really, seriously believe that we
can go back and do what they did in the '80s and have all these
massive tax cuts for upper-income people, and pay for big defense
increases, and bring back Star Wars, and balance the budget in
five years, and not tell anybody how to do it. There is no way
to do it without massive, massive cuts in Social Security,
Medicare, college loans. If you take Social Security off, you
have to cut everything else in the budget 30 percent.

So all I'm saying is, I want to cooperate. I always
wanted to cooperate. My door has always been open. I tried to
cooperate in the health care debate. When we started the health
care debate --

MR. KING: They said you didn't. They said it was
secretive.

THE PRESIDENT: No, that's not true. We met with
them in advance. We even offered to work with them on drafting a
bill. We were told, no, you go ahead and put your bill in; then
we'll put our bill in and then we'll work. They announced an
approach where more than half the Republican senators supported
universal coverage. The bill never came. By the time it came to
talk about the bill, there were zero senators from the Republican
Party on that.

So -- and by the way, then they released the memo of
their strategist, Bill Kristol, who wasn't even ashamed to
release the memo and say, you must not cooperate on health care
because if the middle class ever gets security about health care,
they'll probably support the Democrats again; whereas, if we keep
them all torn up and upset and angry, we can either keep them
home or get them to vote for us.

So I want -- let me just say this -- I want more
than anything to have a bipartisan effort. I want more than
anything to move this country forward, not see it go back. But I
have not obstructed that bipartisan effort. My door has been
open. I have wanted to work together. And I have seen a level
of intense obstructionism that I never thought I'd ever see.

So what the American people have to say is -- first
of all, I think we're going to do better than everybody thinks
because jobs are up, unemployment is down, the deficit is down,
the government is smaller -- all these things are different from
the way it was before. We are doing things for ordinary
Americans like middle-class college loans, national service, tax
cuts for low-income working people, the family and medical leave
act. When people know this, I think we're going to do much
better than the experts think, because I think people want to
keep going forward; they don't want to go back.

But whatever happens, I hope we talk. I have always
wanted to talk; I have always been willing to meet. And I hope
we work together.

MR. KING: Worst-case scenario -- they take the
House. Could you work with Newt Gingrich?

THE PRESIDENT: I can work with anybody who will
work with me. But I do not believe the American people really
want us to go back --

MR. KING: I meant worst-case scenario for you --I'm
not taking a stand. For you, worst-case scenario.

THE PRESIDENT: I can work -- the American people
are the bosses of this country. They run this country. They
decide who's in the Congress and they decide who's President.

MR. KING: You work for them.

THE PRESIDENT: I work for them. And so does the
Congress. So we will do what we are told to do by the American
people. They are the bosses. But I will say again, I have
worked very hard to get this economy going; to bring the deficit
down; to get investment back in education and training; to pass
that crime bill. And now we have to implement it so we can make
our streets safer; to make our country stronger. What I think is
going to happen is, the American people are going to think about,
in the next couple of days, do we want to keep going forward, or
do we really want to go back to trickle-down economics? Do we
want to go back to exploding the deficit, shipping the jobs
overseas, causing the country trouble, or do we want to keep
working forward?

A lot of Republicans did work with me. But without
exception, when they work with me on anything tough -- except for
the trade bill, except for NAFTA and except for some education
legislation -- in a lot of these other areas, they were subject
to withering pressure and attack from the leaders of their own
party. So I want to work with them, however these elections come
out. I think we'll probably see the Democrats keep control of
the Senate and the House because we are changing things for the
better and the American people now are seeing what the record is.

MR. KING: But you'll take that call, and you'll
meet with whoever it is you have to meet with?

THE PRESIDENT: Absolutely. That's right. You bet
I would. I would have always taken it. I want it to be that
way. When I ran for President I ran as a former governor -- I
was a governor. I never shut the Republicans out of my office.
I always thought my job was to work with anybody the people
elected. That's the right thing to do.

MR. KING: I've got to get a break. We'll be right
back with President Clinton. Don't go away.

MR. KING: Sunday evening in Seattle with the
President of the United States Bill Clinton. A lot of bases to
touch. And later we'll get some predictions on some individual
races that the President is very aware of.

A couple of other things in the news. Johnny Apple
today in The New York Times says that the administration is
starting to take on a Truman-esque approach already -- they're
the bad guys. And that's the way Harry Truman won in '48 by
knocking the no-good, do-nothing Congress. Are we adopting that
mode?

THE PRESIDENT: No. For one thing, I don't believe
we're going to lose the Congress if the American people know what
has been done.

MR. KING: So you'll have no Congress to knock in
'96.

THE PRESIDENT: There is -- well, whether the
Democrats or the Republicans are in the majority, a minority can
frustrate the will of the majority just with the filibuster in
the Senate, if for nothing else, which killed the campaign
finance reform, lobby reform, environmental reform and a number
of other things last year.

My instinct is to get something done. But this
Congress that we just finished was only the third one since World
War II that cooperated with the President in over 80 percent of
the President's initiatives in both years. That only happened
three times since World War II -- once for President Eisenhower,
once for President Johnson, then this one.

MR. KING: So there's no Truman plan.

THE PRESIDENT: No. I'll say again, it depends on
who the American people send to Congress and what their attitude
is. I will work with anybody who will work with me to move the
country forward. When I ran for President in '92, I said I
thought the Democratic Party had to change. We had to do
something about getting the economy going again, bringing the
deficit down, shrinking the government, being tougher on crime --
all things the Republicans had previously said they were for,
although the deficit went up, the economy was in trouble, and
they just talked about crime for six years.

All right, now we have reduced the deficit, reduced
the size of the government, passed a good crime bill, which now
will have to be implemented at the grass-roots level. Even as we
speak, we've got police officers being hired all over the country
because of this crime bill.

What are we going to do? My door is open. My hand
is outstretched. I am a builder, not a blamer. I'm not like
that.

MR. KING: This ain't going to be a Truman "give
'em-hell, Bill," campaign.

THE PRESIDENT: It depends on what they do. It
depends on what they do. If they want to work with me, then we
will work together. I do believe that we're going to -- that the
people who gum up the works need to be held more accountable.

MR. KING: You're optimistic.

THE PRESIDENT: I am optimistic.

MR. KING: Reports in recent books of
disorganization in the presidency, two years of unwieldiness --
I'm sure you've heard about this, if you haven't read the books.
Comment?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, my comment is, if we were all
that disorganized, how do we have the third most successful
record in success with Congress, one of only three with over 80
percent of our initiatives passing, including major advances in
bringing the deficit down, education reform, trade expansion,
crime and a number of other things, first of all? Secondly,
we've done pretty well in foreign policy. No Russian missiles
pointed at the United States; North Korea, Haiti, Northern
Ireland, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East.

MR. KING: Are you saying we're looking at the
process, not the result?

THE PRESIDENT: But I'm saying the process is more
open than perhaps in previous administrations because we are
going through a period of historic change. And when -- for
example, when I tried to get my economic program together, after
I was elected, but before I took office, we all agreed we had to
bring the deficit down; we still had to invest more in education
and defense conversion and new technologies. And we had to do
things that would expand the economy. We wanted to help lowincome
working families. And we wanted some other incentives to
spur economic growth that cost money -- some tax incentives.

But there were all kinds of differences on the
details. So we got a lot of people in from different points of
view, and we talked it through. And it was a lively process.
Now, some people wanted to have the image that somebody brings a
president a little one-page memo with two options, and you just
check off and say that's the way it is, and it's all neat. This
is a complicated world with a lot of variables.

MR. KING: Is yours too open?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think so. It may be
unsettling to people that we have honest debates in the White
House. But, you know, when I think about some of the major
mistakes that my predecessors have made, I think the absence of
honest debate may have caused some of that.

So, can we get the process better? Can we get
better organized? I think so. I think that the White House
today is much better organized than it was 30 days after I took
office. I think it's more orderly, it's running more smoothly,
decisions are made in a more disciplined fashion. I think a lot
of people have learned to do their jobs better and better and
better.

But, again, I say the -- a lot of the best companies
I know of in America have very lively, open discussions on
important issues. They take real time on important issues
because then that shapes what the future is. And so far, I say,
if you judge us on our results, we're making pretty good
decisions.

MR. KING: Critics have said now that you fired your
wife from health care. I haven't seen you comment. What caused
this change and who's running the health care battle?

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I didn't do that.

MR. KING: She has not been fired.

THE PRESIDENT: No. But she was never hired. She
was a volunteer.

MR. KING: I know, but critics are saying -- what
happened in that change?

THE PRESIDENT: For one thing, there's no process to
manage now. She never did -- she never signed on to, agreed to,
or was willing to manage the congressional process. What she did
--

MR. KING: She took the ball, though.

THE PRESIDENT: She took the ball, but what she did
was to put the -- to put hundreds and hundreds of people together
to go out and consult all the members of Congress, to run a twoday
seminar on health care for Republicans and Democrats in
Congress, and to try to get the work product up, and then be the
spokesperson.

Now, whatever we wind up doing on health care, she
will be still speaking out on that and doing a number of other
things.

MR. KING: Then what was the announcement?

THE PRESIDENT: But the -- what we were saying is
that she wouldn't have primary responsibility for actually
deciding what move next to make in Congress and lobbying that.
That's not a good thing for the First Lady to have to do, and not
anything she signed onto do the first time around.

MR. KING: Did she dislike doing it?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I think she liked it, but she --
she didn't want to be a position where that's all she would do.
And that's the only issue she could be involved in, and she
didn't want to be in a position where -- she got caught up --

MR. KING: She became the focus.

THE PRESIDENT: It's where she got caught up in the
process of -- the lobbying of the Congress process. She wants to
be a spokesperson for health care, for solving a problem, not the
person who has to manage the process in Congress. And I don't
think she should be.

MR. KING: So we will be hearing a lot from Hillary
in the next two years.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, she -- you know, she's invested
a lot in this. She's done a wonderful job. And she's -- what we
think about the health care deal is that, first of all, keep in
mind how long it takes to get things done in Washington. Family
leave took seven years. The Brady Bill took seven years. The
Crime Bill took six years. Banking reform took seven years. I
mean, we've gotten things done that took years that other people
couldn't do. But it was probably unrealistic to think you could
get health care reform in a year an a half, given the fact that
it's bigger than all those other things.

MR. KING: When we come back, we'll talk about some
individual races and the President's thoughts, as we converge on
Tuesday. Don't go away.

MR. KING: -- on this beautiful Sunday in Seattle.
A little off-the-cuff joke there, folks. That's left unsaid.
With the President of the United States, Bill Clinton. By the
way, this is the President's seventh appearance, all together --
running and as President -- on this program. It's always great
to have him with us. We're touching a lot of bases. Now some
election bases. Going to win the Senate in California?

THE PRESIDENT: I think Senator Feinstein will win.
If there was ever a case for campaign finance reform, it's this.
The Republican candidate moves to California in '91 from Texas;
essentially buys a Congress race; announces eight months later
for the Senate; loses his own congressional district in the
Republican Senate campaign; but spends, it looks like, $35
million or something -- some enormous amount of money -- just to
run negative ads against Feinstein.

She, by contrast, in only two years, passes the
assault weapons ban; a law that requires zero tolerance for
handgun possessions in schools buy students; and the biggest
protection act, natural protection act in history -- the
California desert bill.

MR. KING: It's his money, though.

THE PRESIDENT: It's his money, but it shows you why
we need some sort of campaign finance reform. No senator in my
lifetime has gotten as much done in as short a period of time as
Dianne Feinstein. And those three things may not be popular
everywhere, but they are supported by a majority of the people of
California.

MR. KING: Three hundred miles from here, over the
hills in Spokane -- Mr. Foley, Speaker of the House -- what's
going to happen there?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you know, he was way behind.
He's fought himself back to where he's even, some say a little
ahead. I think the people of every -- every time there's a
speaker who comes from a rural district, there's always the
problem of the people in the district thinking that the speaker
is more interested in the national job than the grass roots job.

All I can say is that of all the leaders of Congress
I've ever known in both houses and in both parties, Tom Foley is
the one who speaks most often about his constituency, and is most
in contact with what he thinks they're thinking about. He's the
one who talks to me all the time. It's amazing. And I think
that if -- my feeling is that the people have seen him back there
working, defending his positions, defending his record, defending
his service for the district. If it's just a question of who can
do more for the people of that district to build their economic
future and to meet their needs, I don't think there's much
question -- I think he wins in walk, but it's a tough race.

MR. KING: Our old friend, Ross Perot's entrance
into the race, endorsing some Republicans, some Democrats,
Independents and calling for basically a Republican victory.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's curious to me because if
you look at what I've done as compared with what Ross Perot
advocated, I disagree with him on GATT and on NAFTA, but so does
the Republican congressional leadership. So both sides disagree
with him on trade. So what else was his campaign about? It was
about reducing the deficit; reducing regulation of the size of
government; and getting political reform -- campaign finance
reform, lobby reform, line item veto.

Okay, we reduced the deficit without any Republican
votes. We reduced the size of government without any Republican
support. We've deregulated the -- in banking and trucking. We
deregulated a lot of the federal rules on welfare reform, giving
20 states the right to move people from welfare to work. We've
done things that he said he was for.

I supported, and most Democrats supported -- most
Democrats supported -- campaign finance reform, lobby reform, a
bill to make Congress live under the same laws it imposes on
private business. These are things we did. Their leadership
opposed it. So what we are doing and where we stand and what we
want to do in the future is much more consistent with what Ross
Perot said he wanted to do if he were President.

MR. KING: Then what do you make of this?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't know. I'll leave that to
you to make of it. All I can tell you is, we have really
faithfully pursued the reform agenda that he and I shared in
common when we both ran for President. So the truth is, he'd
come a lot nearer getting what he said he wanted done in '92 in
fact done in '95 if we kept the Democrats in the Congress who are
committed to change.

MR. KING: Do you expect him to run again?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't have any idea.

MR. KING: Do you expect Democrats to oppose you?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't have any idea.

MR. KING: Do you have a Republican favorite you'd
like to run against?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I'm going to leave that up to
them. I'll say this, sooner or later, we'll have a debate and a
discussion in this country about what, in fact, has been done and
what has not been done.

MR. KING: And it will have to be one person.

THE PRESIDENT: We'll have to get over being mad and
being negative and talk about what we're going to do to build
this country. We cannot for long afford to give into the blamers
instead of the builders. I mean, this is a country -- you look
-- we've got a lot of challenges we have to work through to get
this country into the 21st century as the strongest country in
the world, with the American Dream alive and well.

Right now, we are strongest militarily. We're
strongest again economically, according to the annual vote of
international economists, for the first time in nine years.
We're outselling all other auto companies -- Americans are for
the first time in 15 years. We are moving in the right
direction.

At some point, people who tempt our anger and our
frustration, but promise to reverse the progress we have made and
put us back in the economic trouble we were in just a couple of
years ago, are going to have to be held accountable. That's what
this election ought to be about. And if it is, the Democrats who
represent hope, the future and the progress that's been made in
the last 21 months ought to have a chance.

Why should we give up the progress of the last 21
months and not give me a chance to finish and go back to what
failed us for 12 years?

MR. KING: But can we also say, therefore, can I
trace in what you said in the beginning that if you do run for
reelection, you will debate your opponent or opponents?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

MR. KING: There will be no backing off debates.

THE PRESIDENT: No, not once, but several times.

MR. KING: We'll be right back with President
Clinton. Don't go away.

MR. KING: We're back with President Bill
Clinton, touching a lot of bases. The legal defense fund, are
there any second thoughts about that, or was it necessary or --do
you have second thoughts?

THE PRESIDENT: No. I think with a strict limit on
contributions, there's no possibility of any conflict of interest
there. And I have the lowest net worth, I guess, of any person
to be President in a very long time. And all these things are --
like the Whitewater thing, it's -- these things come up. If
we're going to --

MR. KING: They have to be embarrassing, though.

THE PRESIDENT: If we're going to make presidents a
subject for the first time in history -- this has never been done
to anybody before -- to things like special counsels looking into
things that happened long before the President became President,
that were fully aired in the presidential campaign -- I don't
think Presidents should make money being President, but I don't
think they should be bankrupt when they leave because of legal
fees; nor do I think that Presidents should expect lawyers to
work for nothing.

So, once again, we're in a situation here where --do
you really want to say that unless you're fabulously wealthy you
shouldn't be able to be President? You shouldn't be able to run
for an office because you can't buy enough negative television
ads to trash your opponent? I think what we did was appropriate,
legal, proper and restrained.

MR. KING: A couple of other things. Ronald
Reagan's announcement -- and I know you commented that you'd --

THE PRESIDENT: I did.

MR. KING: -- spoken to him awhile back and that he,
in the middle of the sentence, got angry that he had forgotten
what he had been talking about.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, he just said once, he said, I
forgot. He said, I lost my memory on that and it really makes me
mad.

MR. KING: Did you then think that this might have
been Alzheimer's, a common thing to think in people over 80? Did
you think it?

THE PRESIDENT: I didn't know. I don't know that I
know the difference between the manifestations of Alzheimer's for
someone who's 80 and just not remembering things as well. But he
and I have always had a very cordial personal relationship. When
I was a governor, I supported and worked with the White House
when we got the first big welfare reform legislation through back
in '88. And even though we've had our differences, I always
liked the fact that he was positive about America; that he was an
upbeat person; that he -- at moments he was capable of going
beyond partisanship, as he has since he's left office. You know,
he supported NAFTA and the Brady Bill and the crime bill with the
assault weapons ban in it, because, I think, of the experience he
had with Jim Brady and the terrible scars it left on everyone.

So I just -- I wanted to say that. I was probably
in the most Democratic congressional district in America
yesterday. And when I asked them, they all just applauded and
they gave him a big cheer.

MR. KING: Do you think it will help focus emphasis
on Alzheimer's? Do you think he was right to do it, to make the
announcement?

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I think he was very
right to do it. I think it was a brave thing to do. And he sat
down and wrote the letter himself --

MR. KING: I know.

THE PRESIDENT: -- in his own words. And it was
vintage Ronald Reagan. I think it will help to focus attention
on Alzheimer's. I personally appreciated it, because I lost both
an uncle and an aunt to Alzheimer's. And so I think it's one
more thing that the American people have to be appreciative to
him about.

MR. KING: We'll be back with our remaining
moments on this special Sunday night edition of "Larry King Live"
with President Bill Clinton. Don't go away.

MR. KING: We're back with Bill Clinton. Our
remaining moments, some other quick bases to cover -- Senator
Dole the other night said he likes Warren Christopher, thinks
he's done a great job. Is Warren Christopher staying at State?

THE PRESIDENT: He's done a good job, and as far as
I'm concerned, he's the Secretary of State.

MR. KING: There was rumors that she was going to be
leaving that post, and she seemed to have strengthened it. Is
she here?

THE PRESIDENT: She's doing a good job.

MR. KING: Will she be here through the next two
years?

THE PRESIDENT: She hasn't told me yet.

MR. KING: Do you want her to stay?

THE PRESIDENT: She looks pretty good.

MR. KING: Yes, she does. Do you want her to stay?

THE PRESIDENT: She's doing a good job, and she's
going to stay as long as we decide she's going to stay -- she and
I together.

MR. KING: First time the whole night you've been a
little --

THE PRESIDENT: I've been a little evasive on all
personnel questions.

MR. KING: You don't want to discuss personnel?

THE PRESIDENT: I think Presidents should always be
slightly evasive on personnel questions unless there's some great
policy issue involved.

Q George Foreman. Comment.

THE PRESIDENT: George Foreman, I like because I
identify with him. He's not as young as he used to be, not as
fast as he used to be, not as thin as he used to be. He's still
got a terrific punch. I'd like to think that there are a lot of
us who could identify with that.

And he doesn't quit. You know what he said
yesterday? He said he was really grateful to America for giving
him the chance to fight. That's the way I feel -- I'm grateful
to America for giving me the chance to fight.

MR. KING: So you felt an association with him.
You're only a little older than he is.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I know.

MR. KING: You have the same kind of midriff -- and
he eats like you -- fast foods.

THE PRESIDENT: No. It's part of Dee Dee's
counseling to me. (Laughter.) She won't let me -- no, we don't
do that much anymore.

MR. KING: We're under a minute. Virginia --Senate.

THE PRESIDENT: Senator Robb's doing well there.

MR. KING: Cuomo in New York.

THE PRESIDENT: He's come back; he's been heroic.

MR. KING: Senate in -- Governorship, Texas.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I haven't been there, but Ann
Richards is supported in her job by over 60 percent of the
people. So if they support the work she's done for Texas, you
would think they would renew her contract.

MR. KING: Were you asked to go there at all?

THE PRESIDENT: No.

MR. KING: And --

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I was at the beginning. I was
asked to go, actually, to El Paso, but we couldn't do it.

MR. KING: We're out of time. Thanks.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. You've been great.

MR. KING: Are you predicting victory in the Senate
and the House? You will retain control of both?

THE PRESIDENT: I think we're moving in the right
direction, and I think we'll have them both on Wednesday morning
when we wake up, because I think the American people want to keep
going forward, not going back.

MR. KING: Our guest has been President Clinton. We
thank you for joining us on this special edition.